


Carry Me

by TigerLily318



Series: Carry Me Home [1]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Also the SI-5 is pretty fucked up in my mind., Jacobi is my son, M/M, SI-5, Their friendship is my favorite thing, wonder twins give me life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-25 05:40:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14372103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerLily318/pseuds/TigerLily318
Summary: It seemed that Jacobi had picked up the habit of picking up Maxwell. Theoretically it was a good thing.Theoretically Kepler should have no problems at all with this development.And theoretically he did have no problems with it.(In reality… he hated it.)Also- Tic-Tac granades, Jacobi (not) coming out, Maxwell getting shot then high, and that Bitch Courtney.





	Carry Me

**Author's Note:**

> My first time writing in an extremely long time. What can I say? These idiots inspire me. 
> 
> To my wonderful best friends and Beta readers J & B, you guys mean the world to me. Thanks for keeping me inspired <3.

The thing is, the SI-5 has a high turn-over rate. For the longest time it was Kepler and an ever-changing list of two to three talented people, simple pawns and tools to be used and valued until they either outlived their worth or made a mistake that led to their own early demise. 

And then came along Daniel Jacobi. Daniel wasn’t the longest running member, that title belonged to Simon Mixon a hand to hand expert that lasted almost six years before he had a little accident in the Ukraine. He was part of Kepler’s original little hand-picked crew and although he had lasted the longest Kepler had lost the last of his fondness for him sometime around year three. 

Daniel wasn’t the smartest (Adam Kilns, 3 months), or the best fighter (Mixon 5 years 10 months), or the best actor (Sasha Petrovitch, 15 months) or the best anything really. But he was good, he was damn good at a lot of things. He was stubborn, patient, intelligent, hardworking and so damn malleable and eager to please. He was a ballistics expert with the knowledge and patience to actually do the damn job and not get himself blown up like their last one had (Jason Birk, 2 weeks. It’s taken Kepler years to even consider another ballistics person after that whole clusterfuck.) and the passion and drive to do his job and love doing it.

Daniel Jacobi lasted longer than Kepler ever thought he would. Between the surly attitude, dangerous job, and his occasional indulgences in binge drinking Kepler had never counted on him lasting longer than three months. (Usual turn over rate was between 2-3 months, 5 for the really good ones.) Daniel had made it past the 3-month mark easily (Kepler had had to give Charlie Smith $20 for that, he died two weeks later. 7 months.) then he made it to 5 months, then a year. After six months Kepler started to take an interest in him, he usually didn’t get invested in a lot of the fresh blood but past the 5 months mark he tended to show more of an interest in the recruits, plus he missed betting with Smith and annoying Jacobi was a good way to pass the time instead.

Although wary at first Jacobi soon flourished under his attention, like a weed getting its first taste of sunshine or water. It amused Kepler how pliant and trusting Jacobi came to be, it was also very useful. He didn’t become arrogant or try to show off more around Kepler instead he just did his job, he did it right and if he didn’t he would make it out alive and take his punishment with sullen but attentive ears. He was also desperate for validation and the slightest bit of praise went a long way with him. Around the year and a half mark Kepler allowed himself to start growing fond.

Jacobi also got used to the high turn-over rate. He never really got attached to any of the new recruits after his first few weeks here, instead seeming content to entertain himself or trail around behind Kepler at base or on missions. Then along came Maxwell. 

Alana Maxwell was a new recruit same as any of the others, talented, capable, and done with the world and her lot in life. She was snarky, driven and immediately started vying for the position of most intelligent person Kepler had ever worked with (he’d never been fond of Kilns anyway).

Jacobi hadn’t given her much notice in the way that he didn’t give any of the new recruits much notice. When he did talk to her it was either during a mission (where he was rude and snarky) or at home in the halls of Goddard Futuristics (where he was even ruder and snarkier.) Kepler himself was his own brand of indifferent (demanding) commander and polite acquaintance.

Maxwell lasted 3 months, then 5, and then sometime between the sixth and seventh month mark she got shot in the arm. Nothing truly monumental happened, it was a standard infiltration mission and one guard happened to get a lucky shot in that clipped Maxwell’s arm. Afterwards he had stitched her up in his hotel room and sent her to bed in the room she was forced to share with Jacobi next door.

He doesn’t know what transpired that night but the next morning he noticed that something had changed between the two of them (probably aided by the fact that he had slipped Maxwell some high-grade pain pills before he’d sent her off to sleep) and after that they continued to grow closer and closer until sometime after the one year mark he overheard Jacobi casually referring to her as his best friend.

He didn’t particularly care either way, he had a certain fondness for the both of them (Jacobi more than Maxwell, not that he’d ever admit that) and their camaraderie didn’t interfere with their work (If anything it enhanced their work and made jobs a lot easier and more enjoyable) but that didn’t mean that he didn’t test them at times. 

 

About 15 months into Maxwell’s tenure the two of them were involved in an infiltration job where the two of them along with their third cohort (a firearms expert by the name of Shea) were working their way through a building under the supervision of Kepler who was stationed across town keeping eyes on a separate target and directing them through their mission via comms systems. 

The mission went tits up in the first fifteen minutes.

Shea fucked up and brought the entirety of the buildings guards onto the team, it turned into a firefight and Kepler was left gritting his teeth and shouting orders at his two remaining team members as Shea was killed almost right away (1 month 2 weeks). He’d at least managed to take out five of the twelve guards before he’d idiotically charged the rest once he’d realized he was out of ammo.

Jacobi (ever practical) threw a grenade at the remaining men and managed to kill all but three and put some distance between them and the hostiles. His team had to get out of there quickly, the whole place was set to blow in eight minutes. They ran, leaving the survivors chocking in the smoke, that is until Maxwell was hit in the leg by one of the remaining guards. Swearing up a blue streak Jacobi had looked confusedly between the fallen Maxwell and the three wary but approaching guards. 

“Leave her.” Kepler had ordered. Jacobi had the information they needed, if he booked it out now he could make it out before the entire place was timed to go up. He knew Jacobi could make it. He also knew that with Jacobi’s help Maxwell could make it too. Really it came down to if Jacobi could figure that out as well. Was it cruel to force Jacobi to choose between following orders and the life of his self-proclaimed best friend? Maybe, but Kepler had never claimed to be a merciful man.

“Leave her. That’s an order Mr. Jacobi, unless you can think of another way to avoid blowing up and failing the mission and me.” Was he a cruel man? At this point he didn’t really give a fuck. 

To his delight Jacobi rose to the challenge. 

Snarling he’d snatched up another grenade off of his belt and lobbed it at the guards as he’d grabbed Maxwell into a sloppy fireman’s carry and sprinted away. 

In his ears was Kepler’s pleased chuckle as he watched from an overhead camera as the guards cried out and cowered away from… a half empty tic-tac container. (Jacobi had only had space to bring along one emergency grenade, this mission was meant to be a stealth one goddamnit.)

 

Later, across town in the building that Kepler was running his stake out from he cleaned and stitched up Maxwell’s leg and put up with Jacobi’s sullen passive aggressiveism until the man fell asleep. Then he settled in to wait. About 15 minutes after Jacobi fell asleep (a half hour since Maxwell had first ingested the pain pills he’d given her while stitching her up) Maxwell cleared her throat. He looked at her to indicate he was listening, a small polite smile on his face.

“you...” she started, stumbling a bit on her words “you knew that he wouldn’t leave me.” His smile changed into something a bit more genuine (well, as genuine as he ever got) as she continued. “you knew he wouldn’t leave me, or at least you highly suspected that he wouldn’t leave me. This was another one of your stupid tests, right? And... and he passed?”

The minute shrug he gave coupled with the still present grin and fond glance towards Jacobi’s snoring form was all the answer she needed.

“That’s. okay, okay that’s alright. I mean it’s not alright, that’s a total dick thing to do to Jacobi. And me. And I’d prefer it if you don’t casually risk my life like that again, but it’s okay because. I understand I guess. I’m getting better at understanding you two.” 

“I’m sure I don’t understand anything at all of what you’re saying Dr. Maxwell. It’s the drugs in your system no doubt. Now I’m sure you’d like to get to sleep. Unless you’re not tired yet? Because oddly enough this reminds me of a story. See I was once in Brazil on a scuba diving trip with-”

“Actually, Colonel I am exhausted. I think bed would be the best thing for me right now.” 

“Oh of course. Good night Dr. Maxwell.”

“Good night Colonel.”

 

Something shifted between them after that (apparently all you really needed to bond with Maxwell was to get her shot then get her high.) if Jacobi noticed it then he didn’t say anything (not where Kepler could hear it anyway.) but Maxwell was a bit less reserved and mistrustful of Kepler and Kepler was more inclined to include her in mission planning and taking in her opinions on things when she had expertise. 

Another new development came from that event as well though. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it started but once he noticed it it became near impossible to ignore.

It seemed that Jacobi had picked up the habit of picking up Maxwell. 

Kepler had no doubts that it had spawned from simple convenience with Maxwell being forced to stay off her foot until it healed but then it got to the point where she was perfectly capable of walking on her own and yet Jacobi kept finding excuses to pick up Maxwell. 

If she locked herself in the lab for too long and refused to break for food or sleep or any of those other human necessities, then he would march in and grab her in a fireman’s carry (Much like the one that started this whole endeavor.) and carry her protesting form out of the lab to the bemusement of the other lab technicians.

She sat contentedly on his shoulders in the halls and he gave her piggyback rides while they joked and laughed on missions.

His favorite however seemed to be the bridal carry. Often Jacobi would just scoop up Maxwell into his arms and carry her away. She never seemed to mind the close contact despite her usual aversion to most other people touch.  
Indeed, he’d once witnessed her practically ordering Jacobi to carry her to the parking garage after a particularly intense training session. 

“Carry me.” She’d demanded, arms outstretched and pouting from her place collapsed on the locker room floor.   
Jacobi had just laughed and scooped her up as they’d bickered all the way down the hall, both content with the closeness provided by the other. 

He had no doubts that it had something to do with the both of them being touched starved and reveling in a casual platonic touch that came with no ulterior motive or latent conditioning. Not to say that Kepler never touched his team, indeed he often graced them with a brief pat on the back or encouraging hand on a shoulder after they did well or pleased him in some way, touch was one of the main ways he had secured Jacobi to his side so quickly. (Read: Latent conditioning.)

Theoretically it was a good thing. 

It built up the team loyalty, it didn’t interfere with their jobs, it kept them out of his hair, and made the two of them happy all while confusing the new recruits and other Goddard employees outside of their little team. 

Theoretically Kepler should have no problems at all with this development.

And theoretically he did have no problems with it. (In reality… he hated it.)

Ashley Sydney (Their newest recruit of 2 weeks) caught him gritting his teeth more than once at their casual displays. His informant (gossip source) in the cafeteria gave him sympathetic glances when she caught him sneering at Jacobi carrying Maxwell on his back through the halls. Donovan Keeton in the same lab as Maxwell nearly pissed himself when Kepler had glared in his general direction after watching Jacobi forcibly evacuate Maxwell from the lab after a three-day binge session with a buggy AI.

Maxwell and Jacobi had both noticed his darkened moods, but both where so used to him by now that they both weathered it easily and instead turned to antagonizing the newest recruit whenever Kepler was being particularly…difficult. (both hated the new recruit, honestly Kepler would stop the antagonizing, but he couldn’t stand her either and she had a habit of inviting the attacks on herself.) 

As time went on his ire settled and cooled down into his usual calm (tumultuous) temperament. The carrying continued but he learned to live with it. 

At this point he had more important things to focus on.

Things like Ashley fucking Sydney. 

It’s gotten to the point where Kepler was ready to gut her himself. If it wasn’t for her usefulness (and the fact that Cutter got snippy if he purposefully started killing the recruits) he would have already done away with her. 

As it was both he and the rest of the crew had allied together in a force of undeniable loathing towards their common teammate turned enemy. (the girl really was horrible.) 

Her antagonism also had the misfortune of hitting home a bit too closely around the same time as Mr. Jacobi’s anniversary. 

This of course resulted in him locking himself in one of the demolition labs and broodingly working for a week straight. He only left the lab for mandatory training drills and refused to talk to anyone, including Kepler and Maxwell. 

He ate little and scared the other lab techs so much that they all moved their own projects temporarily to the lab next door, this unfortunately allowed him to put the lab on lockdown and distressed Maxwell quite a bit as she had never seen him like this and she didn’t know the override codes to go in there and try talking to him.  
(“Jacobi? Come on Jacobi, come out already.”   
“I’m gay.”   
“Not what I meant but good for you.  
Come out of the lab please.”)

Kepler however had seen him like this a time or two before and knew that the best thing to do was to just let it run its course (Jacobi was just lucky that they had no missions lined up at the moment.) After two weeks of this (and of having only a worried Maxwell and an obnoxious Sydney as company) he’d decided that this was more than enough time to let Jacobi brood (honestly Kepler didn’t know why he hasn’t come out yet, this is the longest he’s ever sulked like this.) and he decided to take actions into his own hands. 

The end of the work day saw him strolling down the halls to the tech labs where he found Maxwell at her usual post outside of Demolition Lab 3 (she was surrounded by at least three different laptops, two tablets, and a frankly concerning pile of junk food and candy wrappers. He was pretty sure he stepped over a hotplate and empty ramen noodle cups.) 

He greeted her brightly (“Good afternoon, Dr. Maxwell” “Hello Colonel?”) and continued to the door where he typed in the override codes (ignoring Maxwell’s outraged gasp as he revealed that he’d lied to her about not knowing them) and marched into the lab.

Inside he found Jacobi leaning over a work table that was strewn with wires and parts and a frankly very large and impressive looking half-finished bomb (the ground was littered with more odds and ends and what looked to be a lot of broken glass, Jacobi was standing in the only relatively clean area around the table.) 

“Colonel?” he asked looking up and seeming surprised by his sudden entry (Kepler noticed that Jacobi’s glasses were perched on top of his head while another pair was slowly slipping further down his nose, he was also barefoot and shirtless.)

“Good afternoon, Mr. Jacobi.” He drawled as he continued into the room. Not breaking stride, he walked over the debris on the floor and in one powerful movement scooped Jacobi into his arms bridal style. Ignoring Jacobi’s surprised yelp, he turned and strode out of the room and past Maxwell’s gaping face. Jacobi still locked firmly in his arms (not that he was doing much struggling) he continued on down the hall (Maxwell trailing behind.) 

“um Sir?” Jacobi asked seeming unnerved by having his face so close to Kepler’s (he also seemed rather confused as to where he should put his hands) “What are you doing?” 

“A better question Mr. Jacobi” he drawled “is why has my demolitions expert been practically living in testing Lab 3? You know how much Mr. Cutter hates paying unnecessary overtime Mr. Jacobi. Or how about -why has he missed every one of his daily briefings for the past two weeks? Can you answer these questions for me? Mr. Jacobi?” 

Jacobi seemed to sink deeper into his arms, throwing dirty looks at Maxwell from where she was snickering behind them and taking photos. (Everyone they passed in the halls stopped and turned to stare. Honestly this is one of the less weird things that the SI-5 team has done in these halls.)

Jacobi mumbled something into Kepler’s shoulder (which he was currently pressing his face into). Kepler cleared his throat pointedly “A bit louder now Mr. Jacobi.” He said, voice getting more dangerous (He ignored the way the words caused Jacobi to shiver in his arms, he ignored it. For now.) 

“I got distracted.” He said louder this time, but just as petulant. 

“You got distracted?” Kepler echoed as they all stepped into an empty elevator. (Maxwell used this as an opportunity to take photos from in front of them now instead of behind.)

“yes. Distracted.” (he always became more monosyllabic when he was upset)

“Explain.” Kepler said pleasantly (Both of his employees could hear the undercurrent of steel in his tone. They both flinched at it. That probably shouldn’t please him as much as it did.)

“That Courtney bitch”

(“Sydney” interjected Maxwell.) 

“Sydney, whatever she has too many first names. That bitch was a bitch and so I locked myself in Lab 3 but then I started building this new bomb and the wirings really complicated and the schematic needed some tweaking and then I don’t know, I guess I got more involved than I thought I would and now it’s been, how long has it been?”

(“two weeks” supplied Maxwell) 

“Yeah, now it’s been two weeks and I guess I lost track of time and I’m sorry?” he finished the story meekly as the elevator dinged open and the three of them started down into the parking garage.

(Neither of them had brought up the fact that he still had Jacobi in his arms. If they weren’t going to mention it, then neither was he. It would be amusing to see who brought it up first.)

“You’re to report to tomorrows briefing fifteen minutes early to receive your punishment Mr. Jacobi.” Kepler gave him a look to let him know that tomorrow would not be pleasant for him and Jacobi seemed to accept this with his usual sullen acceptance. 

That out of the way he continued down the tilted walkway until he reached where Jacobi’s bike was parked along with Maxwell’s rarely used Kia (she’s had to drive herself to work for the past two weeks instead of carpooling on Jacobi’s bike like usual) and Kepler’s personal 1972 Impala. 

He set Jacobi down by his bike with an unmentioned touch of gentleness (his bare feet had dried blood on them, no doubt from the broken glass still left in the lab) and bid the two goodbye as he made his way smoothly into his own car.

(Shame he would never find out who would have mentioned Jacobi still being in his arms first.) 

Still, he mused to himself, he was starting to see the appeal now.   
Maybe he would get his answers with further testing. Yes, he decided.  
Further testing would definitely be required.

(Across the building in the Lab hallways the remaining scientists were left desperately arguing with the custodian as to why is was imperative to everyone’s lives that he not clean up Lab 3 or the surrounding hallway until at least tomorrow night. He was very confused but willing to abandon the mess after he saw the frankly insane amounts of blood, glass, food wrappers, and empty tic-tac containers spread all throughout the lab and accompanying hallway.)

 

-End

**Author's Note:**

> Tbh this entire story started with me just thinking "oh, what if Jacobi loved picking up Alana? That would be so cute. Oh, what if Kepler got jealous and picked Jacobi up instead? THAT would be so cute!" The I tried writing it and my small cute little fluff fic spawned into this 3,000 + word character study. Thanks to everyone who read, I hope you enjoyed it!


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